Anyway, I'm about go on a trip, and I'm integral enough to my group that I'd like to avoid missing raiding. Plus, I won't have anything else to do after the kids go to sleep, so I'm taking my desktop. I've called the hotel, and they've got Wi-Fi, but not Ethernet ports.

My question is this...if I take my wireless router, can it pick up their Wi-Fi signal, and allow me to bypass buying a wireless card for my PC?

Without knowing the specifics of your wireless router and or your tech knowledge I'm going to tell you no you can't.

It's entirely possible that you're able to bridge your wireless router with the hotels (assuming you know their router is capable of a wireless bridge). However, in this situation I'd suggest that you just invest $20-$30-$40 in a wireless network adapter for your PC and just skip the trouble with trying to bridge your home router to the hotel (requires a bit of networking knowledge).

Warning: A guild member of mine is moving across country and he has been in hotels for a week+ and while he has internet and can log in the internet performance provided by a hotel is generally low in bandwith and high in ping. Don't expect raid performance internet. You might get lucky and have a good hour or two but don't bank on performance like you have at home. They aren't in the business for providing blazing internet, they're providing it enough to get a few e-mails and check in on your local sports teams via the web.

I surely didn't want to discourage you but I'd hate to have you spend $30 for a network adapter for your desktop PC and expect to have amazing quality intnernet and then not be able to raid because it's high ping etc.

You may very well get lucky enough to get a good hotel internet source and raid, I would just make sure you're not depending on it.

Depending on your wireless provider and cell phone you may get better ping using it for tethering. A guildie of mine works for OpenTable and travels around setting up restaurants and plays on shitty hotel wireless and switches over to his cell sometimes for better performance.

We live in a society where people born on third base constantly try to steal second, yet we expect people born with two strikes against them to hit a homerun on the first pitch.

I have brought a laptop while traveling and staying in hotels and its variable, but rough usually on raiding.

If you are raiding at a time when lots of people are returning to the hotel and surfing, like 6p-9p local time, then you are liable to have a latency on the order of 1.2k - 3k which will cause a dc everytime you enter combat. Even doing AH, this level of latency can be frustrating.

If you are raiding at other times, you can often get latency clsoer to 300ms which is potentially playable for non-progression content, or possibly acceptable if you are a more casual guild. When I first started playing wow my latency was around 330ms so it is playable, but nowadays when I get this type of latency I find it borderline unbearable.

Hrobertgar wrote:I have brought a laptop while traveling and staying in hotels and its variable, but rough usually on raiding.

If you are raiding at a time when lots of people are returning to the hotel and surfing, like 6p-9p local time, then you are liable to have a latency on the order of 1.2k - 3k which will cause a dc everytime you enter combat. Even doing AH, this level of latency can be frustrating.

If you are raiding at other times, you can often get latency clsoer to 300ms which is potentially playable for non-progression content, or possibly acceptable if you are a more casual guild. When I first started playing wow my latency was around 330ms so it is playable, but nowadays when I get this type of latency I find it borderline unbearable.

While our guild isn't raiding Firelands (yet) I have a base latency of 300ms, so it's definitely doable (I don't even really notice it anymore.) 1.2k was about the minimum I'd get while I was deployed (too high for raiding, but I was able to run heroics without too much trouble, even tanking occasionally on my DK when we had a fail tank drop group.) That might be a little more difficult if you're healing, though dps shouldn't suffer too much (go into the options and set your latency bar thing to max {400ms I think} and it should help.)